Edward

Chapter Fifteen

Slater's Beach, Massachusetts 2018

I am wearing aviator sunglasses. We are on the beach at your parents' house. You aren't looking at me There is tension. There is always an atmosphere of cool denial and now adding to your parents' multitude of secretes, taboos, and pretenses Jack and his wife have brought their own baggage. We have too. It makes me wonder if this is how family "trauma" - as you say- is passed on from on: one generation an apprentice as a children amateur during adolescence, and an expert at the family legacy by adulthood. People say Life is Simple in childhood. When it comes to your family, it's not. It's a resistance to a strong current. Jack relented, you didn't - at least not completely. There's an undertow though, we can't deny it. To relent as Jack has—as perhaps we are too with your affair—it's very easy to exist under these conditions.

The salty ocean air, cool breeze, private beach and the scent of lunch being prepared in the cottage, makes everything palatable, indeed desirable. It's always a conscious choice in this family. All this, as long was we endure your parents we get all of this. And, now I admit it, I want it for my children the indelible happy memories playing in the sand with cousins. The clam bakes, later bonfires. Just like us. I tell myself I will watch out and protect them. That you will too.

What is the evidence of this invisible malignancy? When I look up and you and your brother sitting on the deck, the perfect July weather. July 4th weekend festivities in the works, I think he is your father. At first glance I mistake jacks square jaw, casual yet imposing posture. The way he holds his gin and tonic, periodically looking across the bay through his ray bans. It's no mistake. In some ways that sweet teenager, optimistic and charming, has become a conservative traditionalist like your father. His hair cut short, cocktails on the deck, scotch before dinner. Slightly loose but a hint of the rigid masculine defensiveness of his paternal DNA. He's still your younger brother and you will always cast a shadow, something he will always resent. He scans the family dynamic the same way he does the blue grey water just beyond the shore. He looks at the horizon assesses the chance of a storm. I remember him as a teenager, growing into this vigilance yet succumbing to the pleasures of adolescence. Only half an eye on the changing atmosphere.

You are always the same around your family: suspicious, always keeping a chip in the game. As if to keep everyone on their toes. When will Edward call the bluffs? When will he expose this whole damn lie? This includes your controlling mother's saccharine laden insults directed almost evenly between us. Obvious in her vacillating affection: the contrast between her treatment of Jack and Jane and us. Why the hell did we start coming back here to Slater' s Beach? I know why. The kids. We cannot deny them the cherished memories of childhood on this beach. As I've said, Edward I believe I am strong enough to protect them. They won't be pulled out by the current, they won't end up bloated and scarred. They won't end up in the ocean, as I did, without any recollection of my violation.

You and Jack are drinking, seem to be enjoying conversation. I stare at you hidden by my sunglasses, pretending I'm not watching you. I rest my chin on my hand. I am laying on my stomach, a copy of His Favorites, Kate Walbert. I suppose it's no coincidence that I'm reading about trauma. All my beach reads this summer are. [add books]

I watch you. Just you Edward. I am so spellbound by you always and honestly I feel safe with you here to protect me from your family. I feel validated and in communion with you. We both are scapegoated and you are the guard, they all know it. You don't have to exercise any power at all. You physically overpowered and beat your father. That secret is buried too. If they really hated you-or at least for any legitimate reason- they would excommunicate you. They can't though can they? Because if they admit what you did to your father that night, yes to protect me but maybe also to finally take your own power, then they would have to admit all of it. So instead, the contempt seethes but I think now, looking at your cotton shirt flapping in the wind when the gusts pick up and the waves rise before crashing. I think...they are afraid of you Edward. I smile in your direction, you don't see me but I like the buoyancy of this power.